


We’ll Figure It Out

by palacearcade



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Disorder, Domestic, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Stranger Things (TV 2016), Mileven, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2020-10-18 00:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20629829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palacearcade/pseuds/palacearcade
Summary: Mike reached over tenderly and brushed a curl of hair that’d fallen out of place behind the shell of her ear. Her eyes were tired when they met his. He couldn’t stand to see El so upset, never was able to, not even when they were young.“I would never let anything bad happen to either of you. You know that, right?”





	1. December 15, 1993

They were living in a small apartment in Terre Haute, Indiana, hardly out of college, when Amelia was born, and Mike Wheeler, who had always been a worrier, found that nothing compared to the worry he experienced upon entering fatherhood at the age of twenty-two. It was a separate type of worry, strong and possessive—intimidatingly sudden. He hadn’t known it was there until she was, because it was no longer just El that he had to care for, but another human being entirely. This worry was unlike anything previous, so much that he wasn’t even sure if it could be called that—and if it could be called anything else, it was fear. Fear that he would somehow fail at being both a father and a protector. And it was terrifying.

It only worsened when he found El in their bedroom one night, virtually in tears, with their daughter against her chest. She held her with a trembling nervousness, as though she were afraid to let go—as though someone was going to take her away.

Wide eyes examined the room, and alarm coursed through his veins. Nothing was missing or broken. The only thing that Mike saw wrong was El, standing perilously still and on the verge of crying, baby in her arms. There was something so peculiarly familiar about it, yet all he could do was ask—

“El, what’s wrong? Is she okay? Are you okay? What—”

“It moved,” she said, panicked.

“What moved?”

“The mobile on the crib, Mike. It moved.”

The knot in his stomach unraveled and the weight mostly left his chest. That didn’t seem to be the problem—_it couldn’t be_. “It’s supposed to,” he told her softly as he walked over and rotated the mobile. He offered a smile despite the tension in the room. It was out of place and didn’t help at all. “See.”

If anything, Mike was purposely oblivious of the wheels that were already turning in the back of his head.

_She’s just tired, _he told himself. _We both are._

“No,” El corrected, voice low and certain. “Not by itself. Amelia moved it. _She made it move_.”

They’d talked about it, the idea of their children inheriting the same gifts that El possessed. She had been concerned about it even before the reality of impending parenthood settled in, and all that concern came to a head a few weeks shy of the baby’s birth that November. She and Mike had discussed the possibility thoroughly. Though, they hadn’t touched on the subject of Amelia showing signs of abilities so early. She was barely six weeks old.

There was a doubt. It wasn’t a wholehearted doubt, either, but something he was scared to believe, something Mike wasn’t sure he wanted to see for himself. In a way, he did. He _needed_ the proof. But in another, he wanted to avoid the fact and run from it. 

Only, when he moved to do so, he found that he couldn’t.

A violent collection of memories flashed through his mind’s eye. He remembered the grief he felt; the hurt. It was unsympathetic and obscure, detached from reality. He could see himself, twelve years old, struggling in the grip of hostile government agents, spitting curses and demands with the cruel thought that he was going to lose one of the only people who had ever understood him for who he was. El wasn’t some lab experiment—she was someone he wanted to protect with his life. He would have died for her then, and every time after that.

Even so, it reminded Mike that he could only do so much. He knew what those men had done, what they could do; he hadn’t wanted that for El then and didn't want it for their daughter now. Just the mere thought of it was enough to send him into shock, skull abuzz with paranoia and everything he recalled about being on the cusp of adolescence, angry and afraid. A lot of those years had been spent fighting otherworldly monsters, worried for her wellbeing more than his, so much that he’d forgotten what the real danger was.

They were still out there, some of them. Neither Mike nor El knew how many, but that didn’t matter—even _one_ was threatening.

This wasn’t happening. Not again.

El’s tense voice brought him back. “Mike,” she said, crying. Amelia had started to writhe and fuss.

“Are you sure?” was all he could ask in return, heart heavy in his chest.

El nodded, and in her face, Mike could see the disquiet, the fear. It was the same kind he felt, the kind that came with a foreboding sentiment so dense that it was hard to breathe. Underneath it was guilt, relentlessly gnawing from the inside and no longer dormant. He watched as she opened her mouth, started to say something, but before she could even get the first word out, the baby in her arms spoke for her.

Without hesitation, Mike moved forward and pulled them close. El started to shake, and despite the uncertainty, he said, “It’s okay. We’re all going to be okay.”

* * *

Later, El found herself wondering if those words were true.

They were lying in bed with the baby in the middle. Both El and Mike had developed a habit of watching her while she slept, mostly out of curiosity. They marveled at how she fought before her eyes fluttered shut; the rhythm in the rise and fall of her chest; the way she unconsciously scrunched her nose.

However, that curiosity was never by itself. There were too many fears and indefinite possibilities for it to be alone. And with the event of earlier still fresh on their minds, it was heavier now than what they’d deemed to be their “normal.”

Mike could feel the taut in the room. He wanted to say something, anything, to break the silence, but he didn’t know where to start.

El laid opposite to him, one of her fingers resting in Amelia’s fist. Her eyes, brown and weighted with a stubborn restlessness, told Mike that she was holding something back—especially from him.

He just wanted her to be okay—safe like he had promised so many times before, but it wasn’t something he had control of. He could do everything in his power, give his life for hers, and it still wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t take away the insecurities, the pain, or the blame that she felt, even though he wished that something so daringly selfless could.

But the least he could do was try.

“She looks like you,” Mike said.

_He only said that to get me to talk_, El thought. _She looks nothing like me, and he knows it._

“She doesn’t,” she answered willfully, just above a whisper. And to El, it was true—she didn’t think their daughter resembled her at all, mostly because she didn’t _want_ her to, not in any way that was possible. However, Amelia did look like her, and perhaps that was the sad reality of it. The baby had her eyes, her nose, her ears.

Now she had her curse, too.

Mike noticed the discomfort in the way she sounded, somehow quietly distraught. Stressed. His focus shifted to Amelia, then back up. “Especially when she’s asleep,” he continued. “You both ball your fists up.”

El didn’t move. “Is that it?”

“Well, no. I mean, she doesn’t look anything like me, El—not even when she was born.”

“Your mom thought so.”

“Yeah, well, she also thought we were having a boy.”

Karen Wheeler’s judgment hadn’t been the best that day—just the thought was amusing. El had known for a fact that Amelia was a girl way before then, and so had Mike, though Karen had been so confidently adamant that she couldn’t help but still find the whole of it funny.

Although, now was different, because El didn’t even do so much as look at him. He knew that it wasn’t just the sleep deprivation or the exhaustion consuming her—it was the guilt, ever-present, forcing her quiet. El was hard to read, always had been; she wasn’t going to just tell someone when something was wrong. It was better to keep it inside, she thought, despite all the years of being told that it was all right not to.

Because of this, deep down, Mike had learned to figure it out on his own—

He reached over tenderly and brushed a curl of hair that’d fallen out of place behind the shell of her ear. Her eyes were tired when they met his. He couldn’t stand to see El upset, never was able to, not even when they were young.

“I would never let anything bad happen to either of you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” she spoke, voice small and strained. She was fighting tears. “I’m just—I’m _scared_, Mike.”

_Me too_, Mike wanted to say but didn't. He let her talk.

“For Amelia. I want her to be like you, but she isn’t. She’s like me.”

For Mike to ask what El meant would be pointless, because he figured what it was before she said anything. He could hear her in the back of his head, months ago, telling him that she wasn’t going to be a good mother, that it was unfair for their baby to be stuck with someone so unfit and ill-fated; this conversation wasn’t far from it.

He watched her shift, grow quiet.

“I meant what I said earlier, about us being okay.”

A pause followed when she didn’t respond, and then after a moment, “Do you remember what I told you when we got married?”

Of course, El remembered; she remembered just about everything Mike had ever said to her, from the first day they met until now. None of it ever left.

“The vows.”

“Yeah, the vows,” Mike grabbed for a hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. “I said that, no matter what, I would always love you, and that I would never leave, not even if you wanted me to. I told you about the night we met, how I never doubted you for a second, never planned on it. I said that you were the most important thing to me in the world.”

“I remember,” El answered, chest tight, thinking about how those words had been messily penned on a piece of stray notebook paper almost five years ago; they were now framed and hung on the wall in the hallway. “We both cried.”

Mike caressed a thumb over her hand, comfortingly. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. For us, mostly, but now it’s Amelia too. And I try not to think about it, because she’s safe here, with you.”

“And you.”

“Yeah, and me. Us.” He lingered for a moment. Then he said: “But I’m still glad she’s more like you. She’s a fighter.” 

Still, El’s worry remained. No matter what Mike said, it wasn’t going to go away. It seemed to sink it’s claws deeper by the second. “What are we going to do, Mike?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Like we always do.”


	2. This is just a note!

Putting this here to say that I haven’t forgotten about this fic! I don’t know if anyone is still interested in it? Regardless, I’m still mindful of it. It’s a nice concept I enjoy working with, so I’m not necessarily done with it. I’ll update (coming up on a year since I said that the first time) in the coming weeks; I just started my sophomore year of college, so I have to work my writing schedule around class and homework, but I’m doing my best. My drive for my writing decreased significantly around the end of last year, but I’m doing a lot better now, so hopefully my creativity will benefit!

I’d also like to note that I’m rewriting the first chapter— it’ll still be the same, just a few changes! 

Peace, 

Tracy 


End file.
